The Power of a Shower

Have you ever been in the shower, not even thinking about a problem you’re working on, when suddenly the solution pops into your head? Or perhaps you’ve worked late into the night, stuck on a problem, and finally decided to go to bed. You wake in the morning, return to your desk, and immediately find the answer.

This process of generating solutions by taking a break is called incubation. Many studies have explored the effect of incubation on creativity. Liu et al. (2024) conducted a meta-analysis on a number of these studies in their paper, “Exploration of impact of incubation on creativity”. A meta-analysis is a systematic review of research that combines the results of multiple studies on a topic to determine an overall pattern. If each study is one piece of a jigsaw puzzle, a meta-analysis is the full picture. Liu et al. wanted to know whether incubation really influences creativity and, if it does, what extra factors play a role in the strength of that influence.

After screening the articles they found on incubation, the researchers were left with 52 studies. Together these included a total of 14,981 participants and 195 measurements of the incubation effect. By combining all this data, the results showed that people who took a break from a creative task performed better on that task than people who didn’t take a break. This suggests that incubation really is an important stage of the creative process. Incubation was beneficial for divergent creativity, that is, for tasks requiring the generation of multiple ideas, and for tasks requiring a single solution, convergent creativity.

The researchers also looked at factors that might influence the incubation effect. The length of the interruption didn’t seem to matter much. Whether the break was short or long, the improvement to creativity seemed to be the same. Factors such as the difficulty of the initial task or the interruption task or the kind of test used to measure creativity didn’t make a significant difference to the incubation effect. This suggests that taking a break, no matter the length or what’s done during the break, will help to generate creative solutions.

One factor stood out as having a significant impact on the strength of the incubation effect. Misleading cues are information that leads in the wrong direction, initially blocking thinking or the generation of solutions. Incubation is especially helpful when a person receives a misleading cue while trying to solve a problem, leading them to become stuck or to come up with an incorrect solution. Once stuck, they enter the incubation period, and their brains are forced to think differently, to break out of fixed ways of thinking and to generate a different solution.

Liu et al.’s results aren’t likely to be explained away by publication bias or the so-called “file drawer problem”, missing or unpublished studies where incubation had no effect on creativity. More than 30,000 unpublished studies with no effect would have to exist to undermine these findings. Liu et al.’s meta-analysis gives us important and practical insight into incubation and creativity, founded on solid data. If you’d like some help with that creative task, take a break. No matter the length, a break will positively impact your project. The data suggests that incubation is especially helpful when you’re stuck. Mistakes paired with incubation can lead to your solution.

References

Liu, C., Li, G., Gong, S., Tu, S., Shi, Z., & Guan, J. (2024). Exploration of impact of incubation on creativity: A meta-analysis. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. Advance online publication. https:// dx.doi.org/10.1037/aca0000722